


Swell and Break

by mid_sweettalk



Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:29:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mid_sweettalk/pseuds/mid_sweettalk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night of the ICCA's, Beca kissed Jesse. That same night, she kisses Chloe. How can a simple kiss turn into a whirlwind of events that cause love and heartbreak at the same time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> So I've only seen the movie once, but I am officially hooked. I've been reading fic nonstop since I saw it, and I thought I'd go ahead and give it my own try. Most likely going to (attempt to) make this a multi-chap. We'll see how that goes.

It’d be kind of romantic, the whole kissing-after-winning-nationals thing. In a predictable, rom-com kind of way, at least.

Except, with this rom-com, there was one little factor that maybe would have instilled a bit of doubt into the audience’s mind, if they’d had open enough ones. One little factor that could have changed the way this chapter of her story ended, Beca knew.

But she’s trying not to think about that right now, because Jesse—sweet, talented, kind of dorky Jesse—is kissing her over a row of chairs in the audience after they just freaking won, damn it, and Beca doesn’t have the time, right now, to analyze whether that feeling in the pit of her stomach is happiness or dread or loss or longing—no, Beca does not have time for that. Right now.

But later, in Amy and Cynthia rose’s hotel room, almost drunk—okay, almost really drunk—and laying on the couch, Beca’s mind is only occupied by the girls’ sounds of different stages of drunkenness and by counting the tiles on the ever-moving ceiling she’s staring at. And since that doesn’t really require any thinking—especially once she gives up on counting, after a while—Beca’s mind inevitably drifts to Jesse and to that one small factor that could have, maybe should have changed everything—

“Heyyy, Becs! Beca, Becs, Beeeeeee…” Chloe starts off almost yelling, but trails off to a near-whisper. Beca slowly sits up at the sound of her friend’s voice so that Chloe can practically collapse against her smaller body. “How’re you doin’, Bec?”

Normally, Beca wouldn’t giggle, but she’s a little more than tipsy, right now—fine, she’s drunk—and, so, she giggles at the way Chloe’s slurred words sound to her inebriated mind, as well as at how the rarely-used nickname coming from Chloe Beale’s mouth makes Beca feel. “Pretty awesome, Chlo,” she replies through a hiccup.

“Good, that’s good, me, too,” Chloe says with a smile, wrapping her arms snugly around Beca’s waist as her head lies on Beca’s shoulder. “I’m glad we won.”

“So am I—”

“You kissed Jesse.”

The change in tone is very abrupt, causing Beca’s head to snap over in order to face Chloe. She hesitates before answering, not being able to see Chloe’s face and, therefore, not being able to tell how she’s feeling.

Beca, in turn, feels remarkable more sober, right now.

“Um, yeah, I did,” she finally says.

“Was it nice?”

“Uh, I guess?”

“So you liked it, then?” Now, Chloe lifts her head to look back at Beca, her arms falling limply around the smaller girl as her own big blue eyes stared so openly.

Not really. “Yeah, it was nice.” Beca clears her throat. “Like I said.”

Chloe pouts a bit, and if the girl wasn’t so drunk, Beca could swear that she’s doing it to purposely get under Beca’s skin. “Did you like it more than you’d like kissing me?”

Beca feels her skin flush from something other than the alcohol. Before now, she hadn’t realized how quiet the rest of the room had gotten. The pounding of her own pulse in her ears must have made her deaf to the goings on around the two of them. Silence now permeated the air. Beca dares a glance around the room to make sure nobody is lying on their back, but soon enough, her eyes are drawn back to the blue ones in front of her. “Um,” she stutters, swearing that Chloe is closer now than she had been before.

Chloe giggles—not so uncharacteristically, for her. She leans forward until their noses rub together, something so adorably Chloe that Beca’s having a hard time distinguishing between what is truly meant and what is done out of the flavored vodka running through the ginger’s veins. Beca had stopped drinking long ago, because the taste had gotten unbearable; the smell of alcohol on Chloe’s breath makes Beca’s chest hurt, but she doesn’t dare move away.

“What if I kissed you right now?” Chloe says in little more than a whisper. Her voice sends shivers throughout Beca’s body, but she finds herself speechless.

Her lips part ever-so-slightly, however, and that seems to be enough of an invite, because suddenly, Chloe’s lips are brushing against her own, so softly, so gently, so—not like Jesse.

And Beca feels her heart simultaneously swell and break at the feeling. Her hands somehow find themselves buried in Chloe’s red hair, forcing her closer so that Beca can get as much as she can from this moment.

Because she can always pass it off on the alcohol, right?


	2. Dates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the kudos, you guys! Here's the second chapter--I'd love to hear what you have to say about it all :)

She’s kind of surprised when she wakes up the next morning and remembers _everything_. And it’s not even the kind of “remembering” where your mind is in a blissfully ignorant state for a moment until everything comes crashing down on you—no, it’s the kind of remembering where, as soon as Beca’s mind is conscious, she’s thinking about Chloe and Chloe only.

It doesn’t really help matters that they’re kind of tangled up together, either.

All Beca sees when she opens her eyes is the bright red of Chloe’s head on her chest. The older girl has herself half-draped on top of Beca, long arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Their legs are tangled together, and Beca tries to push that niggling voice out of the back of her mind—the one that realizes how _nice_ this feels, because it shouldn’t. She cheated on her boyfriend the day they got together, for Christ’s sake. What is wrong with her?

Beca gently slides out from underneath Chloe’s (perfect) body and realizes that maybe she doesn’t remember absolutely everything, because they’re both missing their tops and when did _that_ happen?

It’s now that she kind of starts to maybe-panic, just a bit. She grabs a shirt off the floor—not hers, she vaguely realizes once she’s in the hallway—and makes her way down to the breakfast bar to get something to alleviate the pounding headache she’s suddenly suffering from. She’s pouring herself a cup of coffee when he sneaks up behind her (or, at least, that’s what it feels like).

“Good afternoon, Phil. Or are you Stu? Alan, maybe?” he says in his ever-jovial tone, though, now, there is a hint of nerves lying underneath it all. Like he doesn’t exactly know how to proceed after yesterday’s… events.

“I’m sorry?” Beca says after a moment, brow furrowing as she takes a sip of her coffee to try and clear the fog in her mind. His eyebrows raise, as they always do when Beca doesn’t get one of his movie ref—“The Hangover? You really haven’t seen that one, either?” He sounds so astonished, and Beca’s so hung-over, she can’t really care to do much more than shake her head in a silent apology. “Wow, we are so watching that when we get back to Barden.”

She takes a big gulp of coffee. Jesse’s hands jut into his pockets as he rocks back on his heels a bit, shoulders slouching as if he’s forcing himself to relax. “Okay, so, listen…” Oh, boy.

Beca raises her eyebrows and leans against the counter, waiting for him to continue. “I really enjoyed yesterday. You know, not the getting our asses kicked in a singing competition by a bunch of girls, but, y’know, the kissing you thing… That was pretty amazing.” She smiles a bit, at that. “And, so… I’d like to take you out on a date. A real date, not just, like, hanging out at the station or something. We don’t even have to go to a movie.”

Jesse’s looking at Beca with that damn hopeful look in his eyes, and she wonders, for a moment, how easy it would be. _Look, Jesse, I’m sorry; you’re a great guy, but last night was just the result of an adrenaline rush from winning and loneliness because I’m falling in love with Chloe Beale but she’ll never love me back. I’d love to stay friends, though._

Along with that, though, comes the image of his face after she says it. The pain in her heart when the one person who’s been there for her this entire year doesn’t want to be there any longer. Because she broke his heart.

Because, not to be vain, but, she knows that Jesse is in love with her. It goes with that rom-com cliché: the stubborn, closed-hearted girl finally opens up to and falls in love with the boy who’s been in love with her for the entire movie. And as much as Beca doesn’t want to be that girl, she doesn’t want to be alone, either.

* * *

The girls are waking up, when Beca returns to the hotel room. Her eyes hone in on Chloe, slowly sitting up, topless, on the couch. She watches as Chloe runs a hand confusedly through her red hair and looks around the room, trying to remember the previous night. And when their eyes meet, Beca can see, in her eyes, all the memories crashing down on her in that moment Beca had forgone.

Chloe’s lips part slightly, and Beca can tell that she doesn’t know what to say. She watches as the older girl’s eyes drift down below her face—Beca had forgotten that she was wearing Chloe’s shirt instead of her own. The smile that appears on Chloe’s face warms Beca’s heart. It’s Aubrey that shatters it.

“Did you really only get coffee for yourself, you asshole?” The blonde’s tone reminds her of the first day they’d met, and it successfully snaps Beca out of the ginger-induced haze she’d been in.

“Actually, this is for Chlo. I drank mine on the way up.” There’s an implied sticking-out-of-the-tongue in her tone, somewhere, but Aubrey simply huffs as Beca moves to hand the hot beverage to the girl still sitting on the couch.

“You’re lucky you two are cute together,” the blonde continues haughtily, throwing back her own blankets. Both Beca’s and Chloe’s heads snap over to Aubrey in embarrassment, even as they realize that all the alcohol must not be out of her system. “Whatever happened to that Treble you were kissing, though, Beca?” Aubrey keeps going, not noticing both girls’ stricken looks.

Beca literally _gulps_. She feels like shrinking into the carpet, because this _so_ was not the way she wanted to talk to Chloe about this. “I’m, um—well, we’re dating now. We’re going out on our first sometime this week, once we get back to Barden,” she chokes out, caught between avoiding Chloe’s gaze and checking for signs of the other girl’s reaction.

Surprisingly, it’s Aubrey that says something, even if it is a simple, snappy “ _What?_ ”

Fat Amy comes to her rescue, though, scrambling over from the other side of the room to announce, “You guys, checkout deadline is in ten minutes!” This, of course, leads to everyone scrambling around to find room keys, lost items, and generally clean up so that it doesn’t look like there were a bunch of college freshmen (and two of-age co-eds) drinking the night away.

Beca knows it won’t last forever, but she’s thankful for the small allowance of time she has to think about what to say—even though she does have to witness that heartbreaking, wounded-puppy look that Beca never wanted to see on Chloe Beale’s face.


End file.
